Boots
by Lady Sarai
Summary: (Post X2) Boots are only good in pairs, but Scott's lost one. What use is one boot without the other?


Title: Boots  
  
Author: Sarai (aka Princess Emma)  
  
Rating: G  
  
Disclaimer: I own NOTHING. Just a broke college student on her way to becoming a broke elementary school teacher.  
  
Spoilers: X2, in a big way  
  
Summary: Boots are only good in pairs, but Scott's lost one. What use is one boot without the other?  
  
Author's Note: Thank you, Zoe! I have only you to blame and I'm glad for it. Thank you for dragging me to see X2 when I hadn't seen X-Men in the first place and giving me the fifteen minute summary in our private screening. ;) And for reminding me how very much I love James Marsden and how very angry I still am at ABC for cancelling Second Noah... And thank you for dragging me down into this Superhero Vortex we've created and for *Scott*... :) But most of all for being you, cause I love you and you're the best and I can't imagine that we've known each other for half our lives, because it seems like forever. Love you, hon! (And Aradia, cause even if you do roll your eyes at our superheros, you love us anyway and we love you. :D)  
  
I do have to give credit to "Challenge in a Can". GREAT site, btw. My challenge was "Scott Summers. Lonely. Boots." Spawned this lovely ficlet at 2am, which I finished in less than an hour, which is a minor miracle for me. The site can be found at www.dymphna.net/challenge Have fun!  
  
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Boots come in pairs. Not an earth-shattering revelation, to be sure, but they do. You need two boots. One boot doesn't do you any good. You can't go hiking, or walking in the rain with one boot. You can't do anything effectively if you're limping around in a boot and a sock.  
  
I've lost a boot.  
  
Now, I have more than one pair of boots. And I have sneakers, and loafers, and various other footwear. I don't spend too much time thinking about my shoes, though. They protect my feet, and let me do what needs to be done. Shoes are practical. Mine are almost all black, with a few exceptions. Like these boots. Or this boot, now, as its other half is missing.  
  
It's just a normal boot. A plain, brown work boot; something that might have come from LL Bean. I don't know. Jean bought them for me. She said I'd worn out my other pairs. I thought she meant worn *in*, because the others were certainly still wearable. Looking at them now, though, sitting in what had been neat rows on the floor of the wardrobe, the other boots do look worn. My new boots seem sturdier, stronger. More up to the impossible task of repairing the damage that was done to the mansion.  
  
Broken windows, furniture. Overturned bookshelves, shattered doors. Personal belongings scattered here and there throughout the halls and rooms. Glass covering everything.  
  
And now I'm standing in the center of the room, holding one lonely boot in my hand and without a clue as to where the other might be.  
  
I've lost my right boot.  
  
I would say that I turned the room upside down looking for it, but it was upside down when I entered. Maybe I've turned it right-side up. Except that nothing will ever be right-side up again. Not without Jean...  
  
God.  
  
It's been... I don't know. At least a day or two. And it hits me like a sledgehammer to the chest everytime. Sometimes I can lock it away, this grief that threatens to drown me, like the waters drowned her... Or maybe I'm just holding it at bay, long enough to do what needs doing... Like Jean...  
  
I can't get it out of my head. Because she's not there. She's *always* there... I can barely remember a time when we weren't connected, when I didn't feel her mind in the back of mine. I took it for granted, that connection. That sense in my mind like a hand on my back, supporting and comforting. I need it- her- most now, and she's not there. For the first time in years, there is Nothing There.  
  
I'm alone inside my own head and I hate it. I feel... lost. Blind. Abandoned. I'm alone, and our room has been ransacked, and nothing is as it should be. The little blind boy in me is screaming, angry and scared. I don't know what to do. Where to start putting the pieces back together. I feel like I've been working on a puzzle, and someone came and knocked the table over, scattering everything. And no matter how long I work, the puzzle will never be complete, because the most important piece is gone. Jean is gone.  
  
Maybe I'm losing my mind. That might not be such an absurd notion, but I can hear some of the children outside, helping Ororo replant the gardens. If I listen, and don't lock myself inside my empty mind, I know that everyone is hurting. And everyone is helping, in one way or another.  
  
Except me. Because I can't find my boot. And I couldn't explain it if asked, but I need to find it. Because it's my right boot. The boot Jean gave me. And here I'm sounding crazy, but my left boot is lonely. One boot is useless. You need two boots to make a pair. Boots are only useful if they're in pairs.  
  
I lost a boot, and now my boots are useless. If Jean and I were a pair of boots, what would happen to me, without her? One boot can't function the way it's supposed to, without the other.  
  
Guess I should be lucky I'm not a boot.  
  
I feel like one. My head doesn't know what to do, without her. I don't feel her there and I'm lost. Completely and utterly lost. Like my boot.  
  
I don't know what to do. I don't know where to start pulling myself together.  
  
I'm not lonely.  
  
I'm alone.  
  
And I haven't lost Jean.  
  
I lost a boot.  
  
Jean's dead. I'm alone.  
  
But that doesn't mean anyone is going to *leave* me alone even if part of me wishes they would. A knock on my door is followed by Bobby's voice. He needs help with the windows. Almost all of them were shattered, and new glass has arrived. So I'll help Bobby, because he needs me.  
  
But first... I'll find my boot. And then I'll go fix the windows, because it's going to be a cold night. 


End file.
